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Written in fRoots (when it was Southern Rag) issue 18, 1983
 

HAUK BUEN, KNUT BUEN, TOM ANDERSON, VIDAR LANDE
Ringing Strings - Fiddle Music of Norway & Shetland
Topic 12TS 429 (1983) (vinyl LP)

This is the second product of a collaboration between L.Y.Daliot's Sinar production company in Oslo and Topic, which releases the records both here and in Norway.
      If you're unfamiliar with Norwegian music, I recommend that before plunging into the Hardanger deep water of this album, you listen to the first in the series, Folk Music Of Norway (12T5 351) which covers singing and the langeleik as well as fiddling. It comes with a very helpful 5-page booklet.
      The hardingfele, or Hardanger fiddle, is central to Norwegian music. It has an almost flat bridge, so is played polyphonically with double-stopping, drones, and a variety of tunings. Four, sometimes five, sympathetic strings run under the fingerboard, producing the characteristic ringing tone. It is played without vibrato or glissando, and the technique and musical forms are so far removed from the styles to which British ears are accustomed that this record might be described as "difficult".
      The hardingfele tradition isn't quite so alien to Shetland fiddlers, however, so Tom Anderson joins Hauk and Knut Buen on three tracks - three Shetland tunes and one from the Buens' native Telemark. The playing on these tracks seems a little tentative in places, without the confidence and drive discernible in the rest of the album, which consists of mainly solos by Hauk, his brother Knut, or Vidar Lande. They don't sound like solos; the hardingfele well played makes a very full sound. The tunes can't be written or treated as single line melodies; they're more like an orchestral score. Their form ranges from fairly comprehensible marches to the very common and confusing springar, a dance form in a nominal but very stretched 3/4.
      Most of the tunes are for dancing, and easier to understand if one tries to beat time to their. The sound of the music is high and light, and so is the dancing. The dancers have no bass pulse to work to; they must listen to the tune, and in turn the musicians, as in all good dance music, must watch and accommodate the steps.
      These tunes have stories and imagery, and their rhythms are subtle; there's knowledge here.


© 1983 Andrew Cronshaw



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